Savoy Brown – Looking In

298

4 Stars

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Probably Savoy Brown’s best and most successful album. It was recorded on a personnel precipice as within weeks of its release, three-quarters of the band deserted the ship leaving leader Kim Simmonds on his own and looking for new bandmates to form Savoy Brown version 5 (he’s probably up to Savoy Brown version number 989 by now).

The others, with the addition of mercurial slide guitarist Rod Price, went on to form Boogie legends Foghat, leaving Savoy Brown because of alleged iniquities in the division of income. Whilst recording some ten albums for Bearsville records they became the leaders of the British Boogie and Stadium Rock wave.

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“Looking In” was the predecessor for all this. Topped and tailed by two short Kim Simmonds guitar pieces, there are seven pieces of solid gold blues and boogie. Just before going into the studio the erratic vocalist Chris Youlden had decided to leave the band in search of solo fame. So, taking his trademark eyepiece, topper and cane, he upped and went, leaving the others high and dry with studio time booked and no yodeler.

Cometh the hour cometh the man. Up to the microphone stepped second guitarist Lonesome Dave Peverett and a sterling job of handling the vocals he does, too, whilst adding valuable guitar work to the longer numbers, particularly the final workout, “Leavin’ Again,” when the dueling guitars battle it out like electric dueling banjos for a glorious eight and a half minutes. When the band does what they do best and boogie out, Lonesome Dave also co-wrote this with Tone Stevens.

First song proper on the album, “Poor Girl,” was another written by Tone Stevens. A real belting blues, which is still in the Savoy Brown stage repertoire, although Stevens left the band more than three decades ago.

But the star of the show with Savoy Brown always was and always will be Kim Simmonds (funny name that for a boy), whose guitar playing throughout this album is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Simmonds could easily match the likes of his peers such as Clapton, Beck, and Page but was more often than not the unsung guitar hero, probably because, unlike all the others, he stayed true to his initial roots of the blues. Not for him, the commercial appeal of pop or heavy metal, although, I’m sure, even though he could turn a coin or two by squashing his feelings and prostituting his guitar work.

Simmonds’ finest moment on “Looking In” comes on “Take It Easy,” a slow-burning song Kim wrote with Dave Peverett that, from very small beginnings, builds to a shattering guitar climax.

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This album collects the essence of the live beast that is Savoy Brown on stage and that was where they were at their best, so if two and two make four, then this is Savoy Brown at their finest.